In view of the apparent temporary - if understandable - death of this section of LuLa, I felt an obligation to try to apply some helpful sparks to its chest by capturing a passing thought. Perhaps I should just have let it go on its way, or perhaps not.
Anyhow.
The media, and some sections of the politically minded populace go on and on about saving the planet, cutting emissions and so forth. Overall, that seems likely to be a good thing, but how it can be achieved appears, to me, to be more and more difficult to understand as we humans grow in number.
If you think about cars, then folks say electricity is the new holy grail, and many traditional car makers are also actively pursuing that route. So, just for a moment, imagine they have managed to convert all of us into drivers of electric cars. Pollution problem solved, then?
Not quite: how are we going to make enough electricity to charge up all of those batteries that will, we imagine, power us into that great, clean new future?
There are already massive electricity shortages around the world; several poorer countries have regular outages; many of their people don't even have electricity for normal, taken-for-granted domestic use. Britian is risking its existence with more and more nuclear stations, and what gets done there isn't being done in isolation. France (and I think Germany) is even more heavily committed to that source and we seem to be neglecting the 'green' alternatives, such as they are. The little matter of radioactive disposal is pretty much ignored in public debate as is the possibility of terrorist attack on one of these power stations; we prefer to look the other way.
Every day or night, countless millions of drivers are going to be plugging in; it's already obvious to the national grids when the populace decides to make its lunch, switch on its electric blanket and cosy up in front of the mental chasm that's popular television. Will the electricity be there to handle all of that? And if so, will it have to suffer the irony of being conjoured up by diesel turbines, and even smaller, family-sized generators? Will coal make a reappearance, bringing us back all of those lovely brown/yellow smogs we used to enjoy so much? (Anyone remember blowing their nose when they came back home from an adventure out there in the cloak of invisibility?)
Maybe, equally ironically, the change from petrol/diesel cars to electrically powered ones will be the saviour of the oil companies who will now be selling their products overwhelmingly - and more simply and directly with fewer middlemen - to the electricity companies instead of directly to the public! Yeah, the North Sea lives again; Free Scotland will become a reality and Nicola will be made a saint.
So everything will be fine. And clean.
